English and maths are basic skills that people require to be able to do their jobs, run a home, manage money and enjoy a social life.
That includes the ability to read, write, speak English and use maths. Unions are constantly highlighting these skills to employers as vital for the learning opportunities of workers, their careers and for the efficiency of businesses and services.
Many of you will know the term “Skills for Life” which has been used to describe English language and maths skills. The terms English and maths are increasingly being used – they are often the words learners themselves use to describe what "Skills for Life" means. Of course, some existing (and still very useful) unionlearn documents still use the term “Skills for Life”.
In this section, there are separate pages for ESOL, Functional Skills, English, maths and ICT.
These pages give you information about how you can support learners to improve their skills, along with some of the resources, training and other help that unionlearn provides, examples of how other unions and ULRs have supported members with English, maths and ICT and links to useful websites that can help further.
